Delivery Guy

It's too funny. My pate delivery route takes me down Upper Twin to the river road and people greet me with great claps of joy. Once down at the river road, rain not looking immediate, I decided to drive the 15 miles along the Ohio, and get a beer at the pub. I'd scarcely settled, watching my half-hour of ESPN, when Charlotte and Mark came in with Sara. They ask what I'm doing in town and I explain the delivery service, and Sara says she's sorry she wasn't on the list. I tell her not to worry, that I have an extra tub in the Jeep, and go and get it so she can sample. I ask Cory to get them some crackers. Cory takes a bite and declares it the best thing he's ever eaten, god love him, so I give him the rest of the tub. He buys me another beer. Sara asks me to join her for a cigaret after lunch, no one else smokes. We talked about Carter and American Realism. Between the two of us, we are the Carter archives, by dint of the museum's holdings. It's lovely, to sit outside, without any constraints of time, and discuss something that no one else cares about. On the way home I realized Kim was going to be here for two nights and a day, and I thought that we might just poke in the wrack with a stick. No one I'd rather poke in the wrack with. And the recent floods have left copious piles. . Then I go to Chautauqua. Then I harvest blackberries. Then I take off my shoes and get comfortable. I just tell stories, nothing magical about that. People have been telling stories for a long time, keeping the cave-mouth fire going, keeping the animals at bay. Tolkien's Beowulf is a piece of work, speaking of stories. I've always loved Old English, raw and expressive, and I love Seamus Heaney's great translation (year 2000), but this 1926 translation, by JRR (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien, which languished in a drawer for eighty years, is amazing. Guy Davenport recounts taking a course with him, in Anglo-Saxon, at the University of Kentucky. What a trip that must have been. Two of the greatest minds of the twentieth century pondering a specific text. It's just a trip to town, I don't append any particular meaning. Delivering milk before dawn, picking up empties by the door. Assigned tasks, what you do to feed your habit. Still, it makes you think.

You've gone away,
You've gone away,
You and that goddamn pick-up truck.

You took the dog,
the loose change
we kept in a jar.

I guess that means
this is over, fucking
in the hallway.

Maybe the last time, I hear a train, over in Kentucky, this year, and the lament strikes a chord. It's not that far, as the crow flies, but when the trees are fully leafed they muffle the sound. That lonesome whip-o-will.